”this attempt at a "groundbreaking biography" will be deeply problematical.” och att

”… a good biography /…/ of a towering political figure cannot be written from a stance of pure hatred”. han menar också att:

”The problem with this book is that it is an 800-page polemic…”

Vidare så skriver han att

”There is a lot of bad history in all senses in this volume” och angående källornas trovärdighet:

”And who is their historical source for the Chinese "human waves"? Michael Caine. Come again? Yes, I do mean that Michael Caine, the movie actor, whose personal memories of the Korean War are given the status of holy writ.” och vidare att:

”But why bother with the tiresome discipline of historical research when you can make wild assertions buttressed by unknown or suspect oral sources that are (in the authors’ recurrent mantra) "little known today". Maybe that is their gloss on Caine’s "not a lot of people know that"

”Jung Chang and Jon Halliday struggle to explain Mao’s victory in their Unknown Story, because their hostility to their subject forbids any credit whatsoever.” och att:

”Chang and Halliday also misunderstand the defections back and forth between the Kuomintang and the CCP”.

Dessutom skriver han att:

”Seeing how convenient it is to restrict the blame for China’s crippled development to Mao you have to remind yourself that Jung Chang played in ‘Auntie Deng’s’ apartment as a child – that is to say the apartment of the stepmother of Deng Xiaoping, architect of the market reforms after Mao’s death. It might not be officially sanctioned, but Mao: The Unknown Story is parallel to the historical revision that the Chinese leadership is undertaking as part of its opening to capitalism.”

”I fear this is a case of writing history to fit their own views; doing what the Chinese call cutting the feet to fit the shoes.” vidare så säger han att:

"Mao was ruthless and tyrannical enough in real life that there’s no need to reduce him to a cardboard cut-out of Satan. Do we really gain in understanding by denying his complexity, his perversity, his genius and reducing him to a one-dimensional caricature?”.